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Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Respond
Intuition
Discover
Call
Learn
Action
Way
Improvisation
Muse

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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There is not ultimate breakthrough what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint, because it is the journey into the soul.
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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around...The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance.
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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
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As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business I am in the surrender business.
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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Every moment of life is unique-a kiss, a sunset, a dance, a joke. None will ever recur in quite the same way. Each happens only once in the history of the universe.
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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Paradoxically, the more you are yourself, the more universal your message. As you develop and individuate more deeply, you break through into deeper layers of the collective consciousness and the collective unconsciousness.
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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If the art is created with the whole person, then the work will come out whole. Education must teach, reach, and vibrate the whole person rather than merely transfer knowledge.
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An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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In improvisation, there is only one time. This is what computer people call real time. The time of inspiration, the time of technically structuring and realizing... the time of playing it, and the time of communicating with the audience, are all one.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be 'free,' but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves.
Stephen Nachmanovitch